1. Field of Art
The disclosure generally relates to the field of computing device keyboards, and more particularly, grouping of keys corresponding to symbols.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computing device become more compact in size, the surface area for keyboards continues to decrease. Moreover, the number of keys to represent alphanumeric characters also continues to decrease. For example, keyboards corresponding to the English language characters conventionally were 101 keys and over time have reduced to 35 keys, 30 keys and 15 keys. Even with the smaller number of keys, such keyboards continue to maintain a configuration with Q-W-E-R-T-Y keys of a first of three letter rows (sometimes referred to as a ‘QWERTY’ keyboard.
A significant problem with a reduction in the number of keys is a corresponding reduction, or complete elimination, of secondary keys available for the user. Secondary keys include punctuation keys, numerical keys, and other symbol keys. Some configuration use software to display secondary keys on a screen for selection by a user when a pre-configured key on the keyboard is selected by that user. However, this configuration requires additional steps and coordination that is inconvenient for the user. Other attempted solutions include placing some secondary keys on the keyboard as separate keys or secondary keys activated through a type of “function” key. However, one problem with this approach is that the keys are not grouped in logical configurations.